In the end, it is impossible not to become what others believe you are

In the end, it is impossible not to become what others believe you are.

كل ما يهم هو أن يكون المرء كما هو ، ألّا يحمر خجلاً من كونه يريد ما يريد ، يرغب فيما يرغب فيه . الناس عبيد المعايير . قال أحدهم يوماً ، إنه ينبغي للمرء أن يكون مثل هذا أو ذاك وعند ذلك اجتهدوا في أن يكونوه ، ولن يعرفوا قط ما كانوا ولا ماهم عليه ، وبالتالي فهم ليسوا أحداً . يجب على المرء ، فوق كل شىء أن يجرؤ ليكون هو نفسه.

To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.

It is unrealistic to expect people to see you as you see yourself.

لا شيء أصعب من تجنب خداع المرء لنفسه.

To make clever people believe we are what we are not is in most instances harder than really to become what we want to seem to be.

The danger lies in the possibility that we will not accept the person as he is but try to make him over according to our own ideas.

unless people are willing to transcend their fears, endure discomfort and derision, suffer the scorn of loved ones and neighbors and co-workers and friends, fall into disfavor of perhaps everyone they know, face exclusion and even banishment, it would be numerically impossible, humanly impossible, for everyone to be that man.

What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.

(...) and it is vain, no doubt, to imagine such a man different from what he is, to suppose that he could have been different.

"what you would seem to be" — or if you'd like it put more simply — "Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

It is dangerous not to conform with people's image of us, because they do not readily retract their opinions.